“ Asked why he does what he does, he replies, ”I’m curious!” He is most animated when describing the feeling that accompanies the discovery of a new compound, no matter what its properties. Sometimes he compares the moment to that of artistic creation (”The pleasure of composing a new painting or piece of music”), and sometimes it sounds more like a close encounter of the third kind (”You’re meeting something you don’t know, and it’s meeting something it doesn’t know. And so you have this exchange of properties and ideas”).
August 21, 2009
